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varying life, the poet's mind would enrich itself with sights 

 unknown to him in the flat lands of the Padus, and grow to 

 understand more fully day by day the impressions— often dull 

 ones — which Nature had made on the poets who had sung before 

 him. He loved Campania and he loved Sicily ; at Tarentum 

 also he sojourned, probably visiting the friendly and jovial 

 Horace. The hill-country of the peninsula and of the island 

 that belongs to it, became a part of his poetical soul ; and 

 as he probably spent much of his time at his own Cisalpine 

 farm, after he was restored to it through his patron's kindly 

 influence, he must have been constantly moving among all 

 the phases of Italian landscape — in the plain, on the hills, by 

 the sea." 



"An Oxford Tutor" criticises Virgil's knowledge of birds, 

 of which some twenty different kinds are mentioned, and shows 

 that, although here and there we find some delusions which 

 were the common property of the age, his descriptions of 

 their habits are for the most part accurate, and happily 

 expressed. The classical scholar, as well as the naturalist, will 

 discover in this chapter much sound criticism, and very pleasant 

 reading. 



As a tutor, the author considers that one of the most useful 

 aids towards education is to direct attention to the study of 

 natural objects, and his agreeable method of imparting infor- 

 mation will bring many, we cannot doubt, to his own way of 

 thinking. 



A Bibliography of the Books relating to Fancy Pigeons. By 

 T. B. CooMBE Williams, with Notes on their Earity and 

 Value. 8vo, pp. 20. Printed for the Author by West, 

 Newman & Co., Hatton Garden. 1887. 



Although nearly all the cliief domestic races of Pigeons 

 existed before the year 1600, no English writer on the subject 

 appeared until John Kay, in 1078, in his edition of Wiillughby's 

 ' Ornithology,' published the first English account of fancy 

 Pigeons, and figured ten varieties of them. 



Most English pigeon-books, and very many German and 

 French ones, are of comparatively recent date. Mr. Coombe 



